v
His car had been behaving erratically en route, which is a way cars behave when they ought to be in perfect order; and therefore Edgar strode into the house with grimy hands, and kept the party waiting for several minutes while he washed. At last, hot and irritated, he joined the others, to find only Patricia, Monty, some people called Quellan, and Blanche Tallentyre. All were sitting or standing in a small drawing room, and dinner was immediately announced. Upon his left Edgar found Mrs. Quellan, a fair, large woman, originally thin and raw-boned, who was accumulating undesired and undesirable plumpness; and who wrote books for boys under a masculine pseudonym. Upon his right was Patricia, from whose dress all except one tiny white thread had been removed at exactly the moment when she should have begun her journey. The thread caught her eye as they sat down. It also caught Edgar's eye, which was not unused to such sights.
"I might have called for you if I had known you were coming," he said, unfolding his napkin.
"If you had, I should have kept you waiting," responded Patricia, with a small grimace.
"Were you busy up to the last minute, then?"
"Beyond that!" They laughed together.
Then Edgar glanced round the handsome room with its high and painted ceiling and its curiously severe walls of luminous grey. It was not a warm-looking room. There were no pictures; but the furniture was old and good. The table at which they sat was circular, and the light above caught all the brilliances of glass and silver ware, while it increased the cold darkness of the walls.
"Do you know these people?" he next asked.
"Mrs. Tallentyre was at the party. Isn't she unhappy-looking?"
"Perhaps it's only her manner." Edgar strove to make his tone light; for his assumptions were otherwise.
"No. It's real." They both verified the impression. To Edgar it appeared that Mrs. Tallentyre made adroit use of cosmetics; but they heightened the hard glitter of her eyes, and the markedly anxious vivacity of her manner. Patricia resumed: "Her husband was at the party. A horrid man."
Well: Edgar wondered what she was doing here at all, sitting at Monty's left hand and talking to Quellan as if she had something to gain from him. Mrs. Quellan, fortunately, was engaged with Monty. Jacobs, having served the soup, was at the sideboard with the decanters under his eye.
"I wish I'd known you were coming," Edgar said, rather lamely.
"I was told you'd be here." Patricia was perhaps roguish. "I've been feeling that I must have been rather silly.... I didn't thank you...."
"Oh, no.... I'd been thinking...." Edgar broke off.
"I met ... Mr. Rosenberg at Amy Roberts's the night after the party, and he asked me then. Amy Roberts was at school with me."
"Is she ... some sort of artist? Forgive me...." He saw that Patricia was laughing; but it was at a swift association of his stumbling enquiry with the monstrosity which stood upon Amy's easel. "I'm altogether ignorant of painting and reputations." Edgar could not have expressed the curious happiness which pervaded him at the sight of Patricia's laughing face. The new curve of her cheeks in laughter, and the poise of her head, were all delicious to him. Some reflection of his feeling must have appeared in his eyes; for she sobered almost responsive to his admiration.
"I don't think anybody knows her work," explained Patricia. Something like sorrow transformed her face. She was recalling Jack and his miserable confessions. "Mr. Rosenberg was praising a picture she's now painting when he was at the studio."
"You like it yourself?"
Patricia looked frankly back at him. There was something in Edgar which invited the truth. She felt strongly tempted to tell him the whole story of Jack. How strange that she should feel at once so intimately friendly!
"I don't know," she admitted. Then, quite astonished at herself, she went breathlessly on: "You see, I don't know anything about pictures; and I want to seem to know. It isn't pretence ... or not altogether. I want to understand. But Amy's so difficult, and you can't ask her to tell you why something that's very ugly, from one point of view, is really good from another. I don't mean that I like sentimental pictures. I hate them. But you need educating to appreciate the sort of things Amy does."
Unconsciously, Patricia had drawn the attention of Monty, at the other side of the round table. He had missed the opening words of her speech; but he had heard the conclusion.
"You need no education, Miss Quin," he cried. "She simply isn't an artist."
Patricia flushed deeply.
"I thought you were ... were praising her the other evening," she said, indignant and breathless, her face alight with vivacity. She was obviously loyal, obviously in earnest, and in such company demanding to be teased.
Monty's wicked smile made the others laugh.
"One must be polite, of course," he said.
"You think she's bad?" demanded Patricia. "I mean, you think her work is bad?"
"Terrible." They laughed again.
"But you praised her. Why do you let her go on?"
"One lets everybody go on. You can't stop a runaway car or a deluded woman."
Patricia glanced aside at Edgar.
"You think that?" she asked him before them all.
"It would hurt her to be told the truth. She wouldn't believe it, I suppose," he said. "If it would do any good, certainly tell her; but only a close friend whose judgment she valued would do good."
"Nobody, my dear Mayne. Amy Roberts couldn't understand." This was from Monty, who had his dark eyes fixed upon Patricia's every change of expression with a concentration not to be misread.
"She's my friend, you see," urged Patricia. "I hate to think of her being...."
"It'll do her good to find out for herself," said Blanche Tallentyre, with a snap.
Across the table Patricia stared a little at Blanche.
"I wonder," she answered, ruthlessly. "Aren't there quite enough unhappy women in the world, who've found out too late?"
It was strange that this was the first sign of temper she had shown. Blanche's eyes, as filled with miserable sophistication as a monkey's, glittered at the thrust. Her haggard cheeks showed no sign of emotion; but her lips were tightly pressed together. They parted to make retort, but were again sealed. Patricia hardly guessed, because she did not care, that she had made an enemy.